We are proud to present
Issue Twenty-Five:
THE DEVIL IN THE DETAILS
A Letter From the Editors
This year, we opted to let the nearly-departed souls guide our theme, and through a spirited bout of automatic writing (daily word count: obliterated), we were given a message.
![[chinatown restaurant]](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/61e6d260f3d87147acf37579/1643470510311-VSK26MMPMM7O02K9OYMT/NC-chen-1.png)
[chinatown restaurant]
by Celeste Sea
Something about how your storefront flashed silver the way her bones do now: a moonlit nickel.
Rooms Have Their Ways
by K.C. Mead-Brewer
The tiny gasp of a match-strike. A bite of smoke. Maggie stares at the wick, and backs away.
Black Mass at Denny’s
by Becky Robison
Pour the wine into coffee cups. Stir in the blood, hopefully can’t taste it. Plop in a wafer, watch it dissolve. Take a bite of hashbrowns.
grandfather, beloved
by Nicholas Russell
There was the bear in the shed. He made his home out of lawn chairs and camping things we rarely ever used.
A Daughter’s Intuition, or My Childhood Skulls Memory
by Jillian Luft
In home movies from these years, I am always lurking slightly off-screen until someone asks where I am.
Backlight Country
by Travis Dahlke
If you were drunk and/or high when you crashed, does that mean you're drunk and/or high for all eternity?
The Bone Ghost
by Jan Stinchcomb
A white-haired man opens the door and stares down at me as if he cannot fathom my purpose.
A Vocabulary for the Haunted
by Kathryn Kulpa
If ghosts in houses walk hallways at night, do ghosts in the ocean swim?
Eating Flowers
by Sarp Sozdinler
They towered above the creature as if the longer they stared at it, the sooner they would identify the bones in its belly.
When a Blood Mobile Passed By
by Abby Manzella
Yesterday my husband and I saw a blood mobile maneuvering through our town with its red cross gleaming on a white paint job.
The Maple Zone
by Nathaniel Berry
You don’t know exactly where you are now—not precisely—but you’re willing to bet that you’re somewhere in the immediate vicinity of The Maple Zone.
